This hand is from the recent North American Championships, held in Dallas, Texas. South was Dave Treitel, of Miami, Florida.

North-South were using Key Card Blackwood, which enabled them to learn about the king and queen of trumps in addition to the four aces. Treitel's five no trump bid asked for kings, but it also showed interest in a grand slam. Logically, this tells North that the partnership holds all the aces and the top trumps, so North was invited to bid seven directly if he could count 13 tricks with that information. North thought he could, so he did!

Declarer rose with dummy's ace to win the opening diamond lead, led a club to his ace, and ruffed a club in dummy. Should the spades split no worse than 4-2, declarer had his 13 tricks. He cashed dummy's king of trumps and overtook the jack to continue drawing trumps while discarding diamonds from the board.

Before trying to run the spades, Treitel took the precaution of cashing his last trump. Should the spades split badly, the opponent with five spades would not be able to defend the position if he also held either of the minor suit kings. That is exactly what happened to East. He had to come down to five cards and he couldn't keep all five spades plus his king of diamonds. Anything he discarded would present declarer with his 13th trick. Well bid and well played!